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Shannyn Moore: Old Faustian bargain helps GOP implode

This was a huge week for America. The reaction of the Right Wing has been curious to me. I wonder if we aren't watching the suicide of a political party.

The Supreme Court agreed there is discrimination against certain citizens who want to vote, but a slim majority of justices were OK with that. Seriously? Yes. Not a shocker. With few exceptions, the Roberts court has been a recurring disaster for everyone except the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I guess Republican senators felt better about approving a path to citizenship for undocumented people -- now that it will be easier to suppress their votes.

The writing was on the wall when Justice (term used loosely) Antonin Scalia called the Voting Rights Act a "perpetuation of racial entitlement." The prevention of racial discrimination is a "racial entitlement"?

All Alaskans should be worried that our First Alaskan brothers and sisters won't have equal representation under our gerrymandering state redistricting board, but because the Parnell/Treadwell administration sided with Shelby, Ala., in the Supreme Court case, we're kind of out of luck on that one.

The Not-So-Supreme Court then decided gay people in California could marry. They punted on the rest of the states, but California's ban on same-sex marriage won't stand. Reactionary talking head Mike Huckabee responded with, "Jesus wept." (John 11:35)

Seriously?

Jesus wept because his friend, the brother of Mary and Martha, had died. He did not weep because Lazarus was gay. Oh, and Mike Huckabee, who couldn't pray away the gluttony, had Lap-Band surgery instead of putting a knife to his throat to subdue his appetite -- as Proverbs 23:2 instructs.

I really have to wonder if the man has ever read the book he seems so ready to use as a bludgeon.

Meanwhile, Texas produced a (s)hero for many of us. State Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered during a special session in which majority Republicans tried to shut down Texas women's access to reproductive health care. She stood for more than 11 hours, without bathroom breaks or food, to protect the right of women to determine their own fates. She was called a terrorist by a state representative who thought the education level of women getting abortions should be tracked by the state.

I have a better idea: track the IQs of the men who impregnated them. And while you're at it, track the SAT scores of men filling Viagra prescriptions. After all, erections have consequences.

The Texas Senate tampered with the clock, trying to make its illegitimate vote appear otherwise. The cheating was caught -- so Gov. Rick Perry scheduled another not-so-special session. Referring to public protests against the bill, the governor said, "The louder they scream, the more we know we are getting something done."

Perry went on to talk about Sen. Davis at the National Right to Life convention: "Even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate." Good thing she wasn't aborted, he added.

So, a woman who chose to have a child when she was a teenager believes in choice? Imagine that.

Gov. Perry then signed the death warrant for the 500th person to be killed by the state of Texas -- missing the irony of ending life at 134 trimesters.

The Republican Party is being gutted by a Faustian bargain it made three decades ago. The right wing ideologues who make up the American version of the Taliban are driving the GOP away from the pragmatic, sensible center of the country. Maybe I should nominate Rick Perry for feminist of the year instead of complaining about him. His words and deeds are helping wake up women, as well as men who love them and consider them human beings capable of making their own choices.

Contrary to the Taliban view, children aren't a punishment to be imposed on loose women. We need government background checks and safety locks on guns, not uteruses.

Voting shouldn't be something that non-white Americans -- you know, the entitled ones -- have to struggle for. And despite the end-of-the-world hysterics of some, it's only a matter of time before "gay marriage" becomes "marriage." Which is the way it should be.

If the Republican Party keeps aligning itself with these radicals, and fighting a losing battle to perpetuate discrimination against everyone but them, it will become extinct.

So Gov. Perry, keep it up.

Shannyn Moore can be heard weekdays from 6 to 9 p.m. on KOAN 1020 AM and 95.5 FM radio. Her weekly TV show airs at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays on ABC affiliate KYUR Channel 13.